My friend Brooke and I recently had a conversation that made me think about The Thankful Bag; a long running Christmas tradition in our home. The Thankful Bag is about the real meaning of Christmas and it is a good way to see your child’s heart and what is really important to them. It is a good exercise and reminder for adults too!
By the way, I didn’t know I had so much to say about Christmas, but this makes post 3. If you want to catch up on what Christmas looks like around here, check out these two posts:
What is The Thankful Bag?
The Thankful Bag is a fifty cent, blue gift bag that has sat under our Christmas tree since 2011. You can see it in the photo above. It is the small, blue bag covered in snowflakes. It has a cheap, brown tag attached to it that says ‘Thanks’. Each year, we gather together around the tree a week or so before Christmas and each person gets 4 or 5 slips of paper. On each piece of paper, we write something we are thankful for.
After we all finish, we read our papers out loud. Then the fun begins. I dump all of the papers from the previous years onto the floor. There are a lot of slips of paper in this bag. Someone else might think it looked like a pile of trash, but this is my most favorite part of Christmas. I begin to read the things we are thankful for dating back to 2011 when Rylee could only draw disfigured shapes and I had to write the words for him.
We laugh. We choke up. We smile. We go through all the emotions. We remember things that we would otherwise forget and we just spend time as a family. There are hard things in the bag. There are ones that say, “I am thankful for a home” and we know that it is there because my boys didn’t always have a home before they were adopted. There are some that make no sense to any of us any more and we have the most fun with those.
Here Comes the Big Part
It was around 2015 when I noticed something about those slips of paper. Other than a couple of things, the majority of the things we were thankful for had nothing to do with material possessions. They weren’t things at all. I looked through them again. The boys rarely wrote down that they were thankful for a toy. They were always thankful for people, experiences, and opportunities. The same applied to Chris and me.
That Christmas the tradition grew. After I read all of the things we are thankful for we put all the papers back into the bag and it goes back under the tree. Then I say something like this:
You may not even have 3 toys from Christmas last year. They may all be broken or discarded. Even if you do, you may not have used them in the last 6 months, and that’s okay. You still have all of the things that are written on those papers though. You have health, a home, family, and friends. You have all of the things that are important and these are the real gifts of Christmas. These are the things that matter and I’m so glad we get to share them together.
It is kind of a beautiful moment. It is a Hallmark movie moment, guys. Still, let’s have a hard dose of reality. If we saved The Thankful Bag for Christmas Day or the day after Christmas, we would probably have a longer list of possessions inside our thankful bag. Why? That is where our focus is. Our brain has received a reward for getting something new and exciting. We all know that excitement fades. By sitting together and doing this bonding activity before Christmas, you get a more realistic sense of those important things. Most of the time, they are things money can’t buy, but sometimes they are experiences you shared together and they do have some type of dollar value. Either way, together is the key word.
Christmas Day
So, we open all of our gifts on Christmas Day. Then what?
After we open presents on Christmas Day, there is only one thing left under the Christmas tree; The Thankful Bag. It sits there in the glow of the Christmas lights while we give our attention to the things that are bringing us some temporary form of joy (or frustration depending on the assembly instructions). I don’t know if anyone else sees that lone bag under the tree. I’ve never asked. I do know I see it each time I walk by and on that day it serves as a reminder of the things that are important in my life. The stuff may bring temporary happiness, but the slips of paper reveal what is really important.
You may be thinking that your kids are only going to write down video games and toys. Give them a chance. They may surprise you just like mine surprised me. Also, leave a comment and tell me how many times you saw The Thankful Bag in the photos I posted!
